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In the 1960s, John Collins, a “clean-cut, all-American” student at Eastern Michigan University, killed at least seven women in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. One of those women was (most likely, although no one has ever been sure) a University of Michigan law student named Jane. She was a politically active woman with complex relationships with her mother and sister. She was in love with a fellow and planning to be married. She was not beautiful. In that last part lies the power of Jane: A Murder. A book of poems, diary excepts, snippets of true crime books and autobiography, Jane is written by Maggie Norman. Norman is Jane’s niece (her mother was Jane’s sister). Growing up, she was sometime confused with Jane, and developed an uncanny affinity that she began investigating through journals, interviews and historical records. The resulting montage is a portrait of a very real young woman in the late 60s. Rich with workaday language (“Jane was a gusher/my mother says”) and dream imagery (“They make love there, and become horses. As night grows black they become weeds”) the book seems to present Jane from the outside in. The first time we hear her diary voice, she says “Hah! good luck...too bad I don’t just need a warm bowl of soup and a long sleep.” We read her thoughts as becomes a writer, an outsider, and intellectual. By the time you learn that Jane was not beautiful, the knowledge seems a small gift. These unsentimentally feminine, unflinching poems give us a Jane that is tough and funny. What could have been treacly or predictable is instead, in Morgan’s hands, intriguing, compelling and finally rewarding. Maggie Norman reads at Shaman Drum on Tuesday, March 15 at 7:00 p.m. Shaman Drum, 313 S. State Street, (734) 662-7407. |
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